Italian sculptor, mainly in marble, who was born in Florence and apparently also died in Italy but spent much of his life in Paris and London. The spelling of his surname has been considered an English version of ‘Ambucci’ but it is the latter that appears to be a misunderstanding, spread if not started by Benezit’s dictionary of artists. Ambuchi signed himself that way on marriage and Italian sources identify three other nineteenth-century Florentine sculptors or carvers of the same spelling: Giacinto Ambuchi, Angiolo Ambuchi (1820–1890) and Antonio Ambuchi, a studio co-worker of the sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini. It is not known if Torello was related to any of them, or how he trained: his father, Bernardo, was a Florentine shoemaker. From at least as early as 1833, when he showed a plaster of Narcissus seated on a rock, looking at himself in the water at the Salon des Artistes Français’ (from 58 Rue Bourbon-Villeneuve), he was working in Paris. An Infant Bacchus dated to that year was also presumably made in France.
Ambuchi exhibited at the Royal Academy and British Institution from three London addresses between 1852 and 1862. His marble bust of John Foster Esq, shown at the Academy in 1852 is likely to be the John Foster who was a witness at his wedding, though nothing else is known of him. In 1853 he exhibited busts of Raphael and Michelangelo at the British Institution. The latter is untraced: the former, now in the Bowes Museum and the only work by him in a UK public holding, was criticised by the Morning Chronicle of 24th March as having ‘nothing in it which answers either to our idea of the artist or his pictures of himself’ and as ‘a gross libel on the painter of Urbino’. In 1859 the Illustrated London News of 12th March reported that of the few sculptural works on display at the BI exhibition ‘The two most striking objects, probably, are the marble bust ‘Lyric Poetry’ (581) and the small whole-length figure ‘The Slave of Love’ (582), by Torello Ambucci, which display very careful execution, in the style of small sentiment prevalent in the schools of modern Italy.’ On 9 March 1861, again at the BI exhibition, the ILN reported that ‘The “Charity” of Torello Ambucci is a cold and formal group, of the modern Italian school, finished with great neatness.’ The Raphael bust is signed ‘T.A’; the Charity, which is dated 1860, and other works ‘T. Ambuchi’.
Final pieces called Versailles and a statuette of Giotto, as seen by Cimabue, drawing the sheep on the ground were shown in the International Exhibition at South Kensington in 1862. The latter was re-exhibited at the Society of British Artists in 1864.
There appears to be a general presumption that Ambuchi returned to Italy in the mid-1860s, probably to Florence, where his daughter appears to have lived prior to her London marriage. His date and place of death remain to be uncovered.
Summarised from Art UK's Art Detective discussion ‘Is this bust of Raphael by the Florentine-born sculptor Torello Ambucci (or Ambuchi)?’
Text source: Art Detective
